Sometimes a Great Notion

Sometimes A Great Notion is, in my humble opinion, one of the finest pieces of American literature. I read this book when I was 18, 25, 33, 45 and now once again at my half-century mark. With each read the book has taken on more meaning, more clarity, more subtlety--more importance to living itself. When I heard of Kesey's passing recently I felt a remorse, a sadness that I had never gone out of my way to meet him and look him in the eye and tell him that this one work of his had touched my life in many ways, moreso than almost any other book I've read. Other reviews here sum up the narrative well, but there is one passage near the end that cuts far into the meat of the novel: "...there is always a sanctuary more, a door that can never be forced whatever the force; a last inviolable stronghold that cannot be taken, whatever the attack. Your vote can be taken, your name, your innards, even your life. But that last stronghold can only be surrendered--and to surrender it for any reason other than love is to surrender love..." An important lesson for us all. We can only hope that Ken has found his eternal sanctuary.

The lumbermen of Wakonda, Oregon are on strike, trying to pressure the Oregon lumber companies to pay more favorable prices. The strike becomes bitter when the Stamper family, bucking the strike and refusing to support the union, struggles to honor a contract with the Wakonda-Pacific Lumber Company at the expense of the town. Needing all the labor they can muster, the Stampers summon Leland Stanford Stamper, the bookish black sheep who left home twelve years before, vowing some day to return to ruin his half-brother, Hank Stamper. Leland returns home in the midst of the strike to wreak his ill-defined plot of revenge against his father and Hank, whom he blames for his mother's broken life and eventual suicide. Thus the Stamper family faces attack from the townsfolk and from within. This is the story Ken Kesey tells in his high-octane prose and skillfully weaved sentences. Kesey creates a very complex narrative that moves in and out of the stream-of consciousness among Hank and Leland Stamper and the third-person narrator, but the transitions are seamless, and the reader has very little difficulty following the narrative. Kesey creates some wonderful symbolism within the story. For example, the Stamper house, built at the turn of the century at the river's edge, rests upon a foundation supported by pilings of beams, cable, and steel girders that the Stamper family has added through the years. The foundation is under constant threat of being washed away whenever the river rises, and Hank Stamper, like his father before him, finds himself driven almost nightly to check the foundation, to tie more cable and add more wood. Kesey's sentences are vivid and establish a cadence to match the mood of each chapter. Consider this description of the web of foundation supports under the Stamper house: "White timbers less than a year old cross ancient worm-rutted pilings. Bright silvery nailheads blink alongside oldtime squarehaed spikes rusted blind." The reader finds that the sentences glide past, pulling the reader into the story. Kesey creates several memorable characters, most notably Hank Stamper, who despite his masculinity and hard-nosed ways, is cabable of guilt and doubt and at times, tenderness. An excellent read.

This is the Kesey novel that nobody read after One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest stole all its thunder. Although it was filmed with an great cast (Henry Fonda, Paul Newman) it never gained the reputation that its inferior sibling achieved. This is, quite simply, one of the great classics of the 20th century. Its pace and moody evocation of the American North West are stunning. The collision between the traditional and the modern, the past and the present make riveting, enthralling reading. The Stamper family are loggers, rough, hard men and women who care for no ones opinion but their own. They are fighting the union, the neighbours, the town, their whole world. Their motto of "never give an inch" was the title of the film of the book. Into the strike-breaking start of the book comes the dope-smoking, college educated half brother, the prodigal son. His arrival triggers a tidal wave of events that spiral gradually out of control until everything that has been permanent before is now threatened.If I seem vague in this review it is simply that I don't want to deprive you of the pleasure of discovering this story for yourself. This is one of the forgotten masterpieces. A book to be read, and then passed on to friends who are later bullied to give it back to be read again.

Like "Cuckoo's Nest", this novel is as big and as expansive as the Pacific Northwest it is set in, where Kesey spins the colorful tale of a ogging family pit by circumstance against big business and the negativity of small town America. Describhed with his usual kaliedoscopic powers of wonderfully flowing detail and color, this is a complex and multi-layered tale, with more than enough ingredients for sustained exploration and interest; passion, betrayal, the intricate inner workings of an interesting family of individuals who love and need each other but at the same time want and need to stretch and grow, to be more than just who they are within the confines of that family. In a sense this book is a almost a deliberate self-parody; Kesey shows there are many more ways to be a man than through the mere use of what are usually thought of as masculine characteristics. Thus we have a character like Hank, the ultimate bad-ass Stamper counterposed by Leland, the younger half-brother who is intellectually curious, a bit rowdy and uncertain, and who is exploring wht it means to be a "Stamper". This interesting rivalry and opposition between the brothers is used to explore a whole range of issues about what it means to be areal man and a real grown-up, and Kesey understands that in contemporary America the two hardly mean the same thing. Yet at heart, this is a novel that lovingly but urgently explores the idea of family; what it should be, what it is, and what it should never let itself become. The Stampers beseiged are the family at their best, fighting, working, loving, and struggling together to keep it together and to define their own future and their very own version of the American dream; one they define and create, and expressly not the easy and popular one manufactured and sold politically and economically by big business and by the local townfolk themselves. This, then, is a novel that explores so many levels that it is undoubtedly will be continue to be read and interpreted and reread and reinterpreted again and again over the coming decades. May it well survive the journey, and may it well navigate its course, just as the Stampers do, through a deep understanding, love and appreciation for what it means to be an individual as well as a family member in contemporary American life, learning along the way. Ken Kesey never disappoints, but he is sometimes hard to keep up with as he chuckles his way ahead of us into the stormy rapids of life. Enjoy!

The Great American Novel was written over 30 years ago, and it's name is "Sometimes a Great Notion."One of those books that changes lives. I first read it at age 17, re-read it countless times during my 20s, and recently read it again at age 47.It's frightening, and often disheartening, to go back to favorites as you grow older. Books that seemed dazzling to the teenage perspective seldom retain their charm to the older reader. Happily, I found Sometimes ... just as remarkable, just as thought-provoking, just as entertaining as I did 30 years ago.The descriptions of the Oregon woods, the conflict of brother vs. brother and individualist vs. group are laser bright and beautiful. I envy you if this is the first time you'll read this book. It is Hank's bell.